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The agricultural industry must always stay a step ahead

Today’s agricultural chemicals industry faces a number of mounting pressures. Increases in regulatory scrutiny on consumer safety, shifts in popular perception and the urgency to stay in front of chemical resistance curves all impact the agricultural chemicals industry. At the same time, the demand for food continues to grow as the global population expands at a high rate. As a result, modern agricultural chemicals R&D teams are under more pressure than ever to quickly develop cutting-edge synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers to bring to market while balancing regulatory, social and technical demands.

The paper discusses two of the main areas where these challenges have manifested: fertilizer and resistance. Two examples of resistance that have developed recently include the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds and Bt toxin-resistant worm populations. These examples demonstrate the crucial importance of staying several steps ahead of the endless cycle of pest adaptation. Doing so, however, requires anticipatory R&D workflows in which relevant biological and ecological findings are readily available. By adapting these changes to their workflow, companies can ensure that research chemists focus on developing compounds to which pests have not already adapted.

In the highly competitive marketplace of today’s agricultural chemistry, changes simply occur too rapidly for traditional research pathways to keep up. R&D teams who pursue cutting-edge pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers require advanced strategic planning systems. It’s the only way to ensure that commercially successful new pesticides and herbicides can be discovered, tested, fine-tuned, manufactured and brought to market as efficiently as possible.

Read the white paper to find out more about how today’s chemical companies can benefit in this landscape.